The Tycoon's Temporary Bride: Book Four (26 page)

Tashi had even fantasized about Adam’s
ambassador forging its way inside her hidden palace. Back there on
the sofa in his office, she’d been close to asking if he’d do her
the honor of breaching the walls of her celestial palace, and plant
his jade stalk deep inside her valley of solitude. Would he have
been shocked or amused at her lascivious request? Perhaps both. An
unexpected giggle burst from her.

“What’s so amusing?”

Tashi sobered up at Adam’s question. She’d
been so caught up in her fantasies, she’d almost forgotten he was
standing right next to her. She cleared her throat. “Nothing.”

“Doesn’t seem like ‘nothing’ to me. What made
you laugh, Tashi?” he asked softly.

“I was just thinking.”

“About?”

She quivered when his hand cupped her chin
and he forced her to look at him. “Jade stalks and celestial
palaces.”

“What do you know about jade stalks and
celestial palaces,
cara
?” His voice was dangerously low and
husky. “You’ve been reading my books.”

“Studying them, actually.” She wanted him to
know that she was curious about sex, and anxious to learn about
what men and women did to each other in private. She wanted him to
know she was ready to explore that aspect of their
relationship.

His gaze slid to her lips, and lingered there
as if he were surveying them, contemplating the texture and
sweetness of them, and then just as she started to feel prickly all
over, he dropped his hand. “You think you’ll be okay alone for a
bit? I have to make one last call for the day.”

“Yeah—I’ll—I’ll be fine.” Tashi licked her
lips.

“Just remember the instructions I gave
you.”

With her mind in utter turmoil, Tashi blinked
in confusion.

“About the polenta.”

“Oh yes, yes, the polenta,” she responded in
an unsteady voice. “When thick enough so it doesn’t stick to the
pot, cover, cook on low for fifteen minutes.”

“
Perfetto
.”

As Tashi watched Adam stroll away, she took
some deep breaths to steady her pulse and heart rate that had
accelerated during those tense moments. Cooking with Adam was
dangerously sensuous. She’d been surprised when he’d asked her to
help him prepare dinner. She’d been reluctant at first since she
was vastly lacking in culinary skills. Adam had assured her that
she would do great, and had teasingly added that since they were to
be married tomorrow, she should learn to appease all her husband’s
passions, including the one he had for food.

Left alone to her own thoughts, Tashi
wondered if Adam invited any of his former lovers into his kitchen
and played games of seduction as he taught them how to cook his
favorite meals. Had he referred to their private parts as
precious pearls
and
hidden palaces
?

To Tashi’s surprise, she felt something she’d
never felt before.
Jealousy
. A thick stream of green gooey
envy made its way slowly through her veins. It was more painful
because she knew that her marriage to Adam had an end, and that
when that end came, she would have to step aside and watch him fall
in love with, and marry another woman.

From the way he’d been treating her, catering
to all her needs, exhibiting extreme patience and understanding,
Tashi knew that he would make the quintessential husband one day.
Even his parents seemed to be on a perpetual honeymoon. During the
few minutes of satellite exchange with them, she’d sensed the love
between them as they sat arm in arm—the love Adam told her had
begun the moment they’d met. No wonder Adam was such a warm, loving
human being. He’d come from love, had grown up in it, had lived it
all his life.

‘Children became what they lived’ was a
profound axiom. Adam was love and patience. She was isolation and
paranoia. Her uncle had kept her in isolation because he’d been
paranoid of something terrible happening to her.

The show of concern from Adam’s
parents—especially his mother’s sympathy—had broken through the
wall of silence and solitude Tashi had been living behind for most
of her life. The horror, the pain, and the guilt that had been
simmering inside her for fifteen months had reached the boiling
point. She’d felt that she’d detonate from the inside out if she
didn’t tell somebody. She was so grateful that Adam was her
somebody.

“I think it might be thick enough.”

Tashi jumped at the sound of Adam’s voice.
She glanced up to find him standing at the archway leading into the
kitchen, and like ice cream melting on a hot summer’s sidewalk, all
her cares seemed to melt away. His presence calmed her fears and
filled her with peace.

How long had he been standing there watching
her? And exactly what had been on his mind as he observed her? Was
he having doubts, regrets, or second thoughts about agreeing to
marry her? Or had his honor and duty to his friend replaced the
desire and affection he’d had for her? Is that why he ran out of
the kitchen a few moments ago when she’d brought up hidden palaces
and jade stalks?

Stop it! Stop the paranoia
and
feelings of insecurity
, she told herself.
You’ve moved
beyond that. They’re just thoughts, not reality, anymore. You’re
safe with Adam.

“Tashi, you can stop whisking.”

Tashi took a deep breath of composure as Adam
walked back into the kitchen. Remembering the instructions he’d
given her, she placed the whisk on a cast iron holder between the
burners, turned the flame to low, covered the pot, and set the
timer to fifteen minutes.

“
Perfetto
,” he said, turning on the
burner under the saucepan he’d placed on the stove before he left
to make his call.

He’d been leaving her alone in the kitchen an
awful lot, Tashi thought, as she stepped to the side, away from
him. Maybe he was just trying to get her accustomed to taking
command of cooking meals. “Would you like me to do anything else?”
she asked, glancing at the ingredients she’d measured out. They
hadn’t even been mixed together, yet it smelled delicious in the
kitchen already.

“No. I think we’re set. I just have to make
the milk sauce to add to the polenta once it’s cooked.” He picked
up a wooden spoon from the countertop.

From beneath her lashes, Tashi peeked at
Adam’s long fingers curled around the spoon as he stirred the milk
sauce. She felt herself growing warm as she watched the muscles in
his arm flex, and imagined the coating of hair brushing against her
skin as he caressed her. She didn’t even know that merely watching
a man’s hands and fingers at work could stir desire in her, make
her think about things she shouldn’t be thinking about—like making
love and making babies.

Babies?
Tashi had never thought of
herself as a mother, especially since she never had one to learn
from. She hadn’t even thought of herself as a woman, much less a
desirable one in over a year. It seemed as if exposing the darkest
secrets of her heart had freed up space for other dreams to
materialize. And since Adam was the man she’d confided in and the
man she was to marry, even though temporarily, she supposed it was
only natural that her new dreams would involve him—dreams she knew
would never come true with him.

Her lips and brows puckered. “How come some
lucky woman hasn’t snatched you up yet?’ she asked. “You said your
father thought you were ready for marriage at twenty-one. Are the
women in Granite Falls and the rest of the world simply blind and
stupid?”

He turned his head and glanced at her, a
flash of some indescribable emotion in his eyes.

Had she said the wrong thing? Tashi wondered,
as he pressed his lips together and his jaws flexed visibly. The
air around them immediately became charged with something Tashi
couldn’t quite fathom. Why would such a simple question bring on
such tension? She felt as if she were standing smack in the middle
of a magnetic field. Her mind told her to put physical distance
between them, but her legs had morphed into rubber.

“Well, it’s not for lack of trying,” he said,
finally. “I’ve had two serious relationships. I was even engaged
once. Several years ago.”

So that was his ‘especially after’.
“What happened?”

“She left me standing at the altar.”

I’m sorry
came to her mind, but Tashi
wasn’t sorry. She was glad
that
woman, for whatever reason,
had left him, because if she hadn’t, the past nineteen days of her
life would never have happened, and she would not be marrying him
tomorrow. Tashi was grateful for the time she’d already spent with
Adam and looked forward to more before the inevitable end of their
relationship. He’d taught her so much. He’d taught her how to trust
and love. And for that she appreciated him, adored him.
Loved
him
.

Tashi pressed a hand to her chest as the
knowledge spread, like warm honey flowing slowly through a tiny
spout, into every cell of her being. It settled in her erratically
beating heart.
She loved Adam
. Her heart leaped with
excitement as she accepted and embraced the breathtaking
knowledge.

What was there about this man not to love?
Nothing
. Apart from duty—in her case—he didn’t strike her as
the kind of man who would ask a woman to marry him unless he meant
it, so he must have loved this woman deeply. Perhaps that was his
flaw. He’d made a mistake with one or both of his previous serious
relationships. He’d been rejected and humiliated, and was now
damaged, perhaps incapable of commitment.

Tashi understood Adam’s logic. She’d thought
she loved Scottie, too, and had told him so. But he’d never said it
back. She hadn’t understood why until the night of the shoot-out.
He didn’t, couldn’t love her. She was merchandise. He hadn’t even
kissed her like a boy should kiss his girlfriend. He’d given her
pecks on the cheek, and when she’d tried to kiss him on the lips,
he’d said that he respected her and wanted to wait until after she
met his parents. It was all a big load of crap. He was probably
forbidden from touching the merchandise—especially the virgin
ones.

Tashi sighed inwardly. She was as damaged as
Adam when it came to relationships. She’d felt rejected when
Scottie hadn’t shared her declaration of love, and she’d been
humiliated when she’d found out why he’d pretended to like her in
the first place.

Adam had no problems with marrying her
because he knew it was just granting his friend’s request. His
commitment was temporary. “She must be a very foolish woman,” Tashi
murmured with a tinge of bitterness toward the woman for breaking
Adam’s heart and probably scarring him for life.

“Or, I’m a very lucky man.”

Okay… Not the response she expected
.
“Didn’t you love her?”

“I thought I did back then, but now I know I
was wrong.”

“How do you know?”

He inclined his head and gazed at her, and
within that intense moment of time, Tashi felt their inner
universes colliding as surely as their bodies had collided the day
they’d met. She tried to steady her breathing as that magnetic
energy surging between them pulled her into the center of that
“open heart” space where their past and their future simply melted
away, leaving them transfixed in their
now
, their
present
where they were one.

Namaste!
The word and its meaning
resonated inside Tashi over and over again, and she expelled a
ragged breath as she felt her heart and soul unlock and open in
complete surrender to Adam.

His body tensed for a split second as if he’d
felt it too, as if he’d reached that place of Light, Truth, and
Peace in him at the same moment she’d reached that place in
herself. He inhaled sharply as his eyes raked boldly over her. It
was a look of unmistakable passion—a distinctive brazen look that
was void of all vacillations, and full of purpose and promises
Tashi had been afraid of acknowledging before—but no more.

Her body responded to the potential
fulfillment in that look. It grew full and heavy with yearning. Her
breasts swelled and her nipples hardened and tingled beneath her
dress. She felt a heavy thudding between her thighs and a rush of
moisture in her panties as her body prepared itself to be overrun
by passion’s storm.

There was no masking it, no denying it. They
were going to make love. And it was going to start right here in
his kitchen with uncooked
Polenta Elisa
on the stove,
portions of ingredients laid out on the countertop, and the smell
of garlic and sage, and pepper and prosciutto scenting the air.

Where it would end, was anyone’s guess.

As he shut off the burners and the timer,
Tashi remembered his words to her in the garden three days ago:
When the time comes, we’ll both know, and we’ll strip ourselves
of everything foreign to us, everything that’s not us, so our union
will be pure and sweet and wholesome.

As if in a trance, Tashi watched Adam’s
fingers reach for his shirttail, just as hers clutched the cotton
material of her dress. She pulled it over her head at the same time
he rid himself of his shirt. The items of clothing slithered to the
floor on top of each other. A few seconds later, his khaki shorts,
her bra, and her panties completed the pile on the kitchen floor.
He wore no briefs.

An impatient need rumbled through Tashi as
her gaze drifted down Adam’s body to the place at his groin where
his shaft pulsed against his stomach. Nineteen days of yearning was
packed inside him and ready to explode—deep inside her. The walls
of her vagina contracted in anticipation of his long-awaited
invasion.

She was not a little girl anymore. She was
not afraid, not ashamed, and she felt no guilt over the wanton
indulgences she was about to embrace.

He stood in front of her, his blue eyes
blazing into her emerald ones like crackling streaks of lightning
directing heat and current through a summer storm. “I know.” He
stepped closer still, trapping her between his body and the
counter. Reaching behind her, he loosened her ponytail and threaded
his fingers in her hair as it fell around her shoulders. He cupped
her face in his hands, and bending down, he tipped his head to the
side.